He gazed at the door of the hospital shack.

He could hear faint sounds from within, a footfall on the board floor, an indistinct word or murmur.

Behind him and farther down the street, in the big cook tents where the crews ate, was the rattle of pans and an occasional oath or burst of laughter.

There the cooks were peeling potatoes and mixing great pans of biscuit dough and exchanging jests, while here in the shack a fight was going on for a life.
Bryant saw again that unshaven, heavy-faced workman, with the terribly mangled arm, whom he had brought hither.

Poor devil! Some oversight, some carelessness, some mistake on the part of himself or another; and if not a dead man, then one-armed for the rest of his days.